The Beanfield

One of the hits of Edinburgh 2015, The Beanfield is the boldy political first show from Warwick University graduates Breach Theatre.

2015 marks the 30th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield – a brutal police crackdown on the annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Called away from policing the miners' strike to uphold a new injunction around the Stones, officers took the tactics of Orgreave to a field in Wiltshire – battering and injuring new age travellers, making mass-arrests and destroying their mobile homes. Performance makers Breach, and Guardian award-winning video artist Dorothy Allen-Pickard present a multimedia show set between the 1985 and 2015 summer solstice celebrations, reflecting on state violence, civic freedom and cultural heritage.

Additional Information

ISBN13

9781783197330

Binding

PaperBack

Page Extent

120

Reviews

‘This invigorating, complex piece of political theatre that cunningly combines film and live action to chart the activity of a small group of Warwick students who set out to reconstruct the Beanfield battle. The performance acknowledges the absurdity of their endeavour to re-enact something so big – and at the distance of 30 years. They dress up like solemn children in policemen’s uniforms; there is much fake blood. At one moment during the re-enactment, one of the participants gets hurt and starts to cry. Suddenly, this isn’t absurd any more. It hums with the same anger as it makes connections between what happened during that far-off day in a Wiltshire field, the miners’ strike, and what happened in December 2014 on the Warwick campus when police were accused of using force against student protesters. A theatrically ambitious and boldly political show about how we got from there to here – and the erosion of civil liberties.’ Guardian

'what can't be denied is the ambition and freshness of this young, brazenly political company. Keep an eye out for this lot: I think whatever they produce next will be brilliant.' Time Out London